This year I learned how to make sponge cake. But not just any sponge cake. My Great Aunts Celie and Rosie’s top-secret sponge cake. My Aunt Aileen decided it was time for me to learn and came to my house bearing note cards, ingredients and the special Coke bottles on which to hang the cakes. She was disappointed with the results from my modern hand-mixer, but relaxed after my mother promised to give me my grandmother’s ancient Mixmaster.

So, I learned how to make sponge cake. I don’t like sponge cake. But, I will now make it every Passover. Why? Because first, it truly was an honor that I was taught the recipe (only one person in each generation has known it) and second, on Passover we eat sponge cake.

Food makes the holiday. An easy way to make a Jewish home is to serve traditional foods on the appropriate occasions. Bake a round challah on Rosh Hashana. Roast a chicken on Shabbas. Make potato latkes on Chanukah.

There is something about the way my house feels when I have challah cooling on the table and brisket cooking in the oven—the smells transform the home. Brisket and challah are not regular smells in my house—they are holiday smells. My mother always says “it smells like yontif (holiday).”

Whether you work or stay-at-home, you need to feed your family. Serving a traditional Jewish meal is an easy way to teach our children our customs and traditions. Cooking is also something they can participate in—let them help roll the challah dough (if they can roll playdough, they can roll challah dough). Let them help form matzo balls. Teach them to grate potatoes for latkes. These tastes and smells and activities form a lasting memory. I don’t remember what I received as a gift for Chanukah last year, but I remember all the friends who came over for latkes.

I once heard a rabbi ask the congregation “when a group of Jews get together, what are they most likely to do?” The first answer was “Eat.” The second was talk.

If you can’t cook, there are ways…defrost a frozen challah dough and bake that (store-bought baked challah doesn’t smell). Buy chicken soup with matzo balls or rotisserie chicken. If you have family recipes, they add your own family’s history to the meal. I like to make my Grandma Hilda’s carrot soufflé on holidays (not ‘cause it’s a traditional Jewish food, but because it was something my Grandma made). Try as I might, I can’t duplicate my Aunt Aileen’s humungous matzo balls. So, I make wonderful herbed matzo balls from a recipe I found in Bon Appetite magazine. Now these “modern” matzo balls have become tradition at my seder table. If you don’t have family recipes, start your own. Bon Appetite always has wonderful recipes for the High Holidays, Chanukah and Passover. And I highly recommend the new kosher cookbook by Susie Fishbein.

And, I’m not just talking about holiday time. These traditional foods link us to our people, our history, our family. There is a wonderful book Joy Horowitz wrote about her grandmothers called Tessie and Pearl. Each chapter starts with one of her grandmother’s recipes. My mother used to tell me about the recipes she got from her mother and aunts. They would write them out the way they used to do them with directions like “a little sugar, you’ll know when it’s enough.” The week before my daughter was born, I made my grandmother’s mandel bread recipe everyday! Something about baking my grandma’s mandel bread was very comforting. I didn’t even need to eat it, I just needed to bake it.

Shavous is coming soon (June 13 and 14). It is tradition to eat dairy on Shavuot. So, even if you’ve never celebrated it before, and even if you have no intention of going to shul, why not serve bagels and lox for dinner and make a dairy kugel? Easy. And you’ve just introduced a Jewish tradition into your home.

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